


Salt in the Wound

by Dovey



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, F/M, Haruno Sakura-centric, Missing-Nin, Missing-Nin Sakura, Other, Wave arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovey/pseuds/Dovey
Summary: The Wave arc, except Sakura's flimsy attempt at protecting the client results in her accidentally faking her death. Zabuza survives and takes her along with him as an apprentice, and she grows up in the harder but more emotional life of a nin on the run.aka I have a lot ideas of how Missing-Nin would have a different culture than the rest of Naruto-verse, that would place a high-value on youngins' in the trade given the rarity, and Sakura gets a lot of teachers over the years for the price of lots of emotional trauma & loss.also, she gets a big fuck-off sword.





	1. The Great Haruno Bridge

Things weren’t meant to go like this. It was supposed to be a low-level mission, bore the hell out of the kids, and get them back on track. Maybe it’d push Sakura to take things a little more seriously, or help Sasuke realize that ninjas work in teams for a reason. Instead, it was a disaster, unmitigated.

 

Naruto is panting and furious and foolish, tricked over and over again but holding his own in that odd way that comes from endless chakra and even more bountiful dedication. Sasuke is injured- from protecting his teammates, thank god, so at least there’s that- and exhausted, utterly useless for any further fighting.

 

Sakura…

 

 Sakura had been standing guard over the client. She hadn’t had the skills or the chakra reserves to actually _fight,_ might less the will to do it, but she was standing guard regardless and Kakashi feels bitter that the only lesson she seems to have remembered was loyalty and sacrifice. If she was smarter, she’d have run. Instead-

 

Zabuza swings towards the old man as Kakashi feels the blood soak into his eye, a temporary blindness that allows the missing nin to get a single wild slice at the client. He’s skilled, even in that instant, and it would’ve hit its’ target if Sakura hadn’t jumped in the way. She had a single kunai, and the thought of deflecting with that, with anything, was impossible- she was a human shield, not executing a defensive maneuver.

 

She fell. The old man stumbled back. Zabuza returned his attention to Kakashi, and Kakashi fought to bring his focus back to his fight.

 

It was later, both far too long and far too short, when Zabuza had helped and the false hunter had died and the bridge was covered in bodies, that he could turn his eyes back to the girl who’d been in his charge.

 

Even with the lack of oxygen in his brain, even with the blood dripping down his face, he could still sense the steam of chakra rising up and out of her body. Nothing more than a cooling corpse.

 

“Naruto.” Kakashi called, already leaning on Sasuke, drapped across the boy’s shoulders with one arm and the other trying to stem the blood flow from his own gut. “We have to go.”

 

Naruto turned to look at Kakashi, flailing slightly at the attempt to turn mid-run. “What about Sakura?” He asked, and it was a testament to how exhausted the kid was that he said it as calm as he did. His bottom lip is wobbling and he’s already been crying and Kakashi’s heart is breaking all over again.

 

Kakashi wishes he could lie. He wishes he could fix it. But this wasn’t the sort of thing you could hide, and it’s something his remaining students would have to learn at some point or another on their path to being shinobi.

“She’s dead. We prioritize medical care over-“ and he pauses, because he doesn’t think these two are ready for the word corpse, the finality of it. “Over body-recovery. We have to go.”

 

 

And maybe, technically, they’re supposed to burn the body of a fallen comrade in enemy territory, even a lowly genin. But Kakashi’s not going to make her teammates watch that, and the bridge is filled with fallen nin; there’ll be a mass-burning anyways. The boys don’t have to learn what the smoke of a comrade smells like just yet. There’s been enough hard lessons today as it is.

So they leave, and nobody says anything about the tears and snot dripping down Naruto’s face or the stutter sasuke has when they arrive at the gate and Sakura’s parents are waiting.

 

There was only one problem: Their fallen teammate was alive.

 

 

\--

 

Sakura had seen the blade coming and jumped in front of it, instincts damning her to a bloody fate. She struggled with staying awake, but as soon as Zabuza’s attention returned to his task- away from the client, away from her position- she felt herself lapse into sleep.

 Sakura hadn’t been taught anything, and she hadn’t been trained. But she was a creature of instinct, and in a small sense, gifted. Wavering between the waking world and something much darker than sleep, she saw the fighting around her, the endless crash of enemy nin. And, instinctively, she tamped down on her chakra. Slowed her breathing, slowed her heart.

Slowing the blood flow helped her keep it all from gushing out her wound- crushing her chakra to a pebble of recognition kept the enemies from finishing her off. She faded out of consciousness but the control remained, and when Kakashi drifted his eyes to her, he saw what her body so desperately wanted the world to see: a corpse, not a combatant. Not his student.

She would’ve truly been dead, soon enough, if Zabuza had not seen her blood still slowly, slowly seeping out. The way it only does when a heart still beats.

He had grown so used to having an assistant, and this pitiful creature reminded him of his Haku in the barest sense. In the ways she is small and weak and threw herself in the way of a deathblow. He stitched up her wounds and poured alcohol on it to disinfect it and she screamed in her sleep as he cleaned the wound, but she does not die. He left the rest of her dirty and crusted in blood- she’d have to get used to the filth at some point, on this road.

 Took her to see a town doctor who kept a wary eye on the monster in his operating room, but who couldn’t turn away a young girl on death’s door. She lives.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rules and adaptions.

When she finally, finally woke up, it was next to a campfire to the smell of roasting wild pig. Disoriented, sore, starving, she reached blindly towards the food without even registering the man eating it. He slapped her hand away, then laughed.

“About time!” He said, and her bleary vision finally focused on his face. She scurried back and winced, not ready to move nearly as much as she wanted to.

“Hey, kid, don’t be rude. I saved your life, you know!” He said, and she felt at her stitches. Looked at her hands, crusted in dried blood. Then she looked at the food on his plate, and he laughed again, and he tossed her a chunk of meat that she tore into without a thought to what she must look like. The fresh blood from the meat stained her face, dripped down over her own crusted blood, and she didn’t care. It was good.

Sakura’s eyes darted around the camp quickly as she chewed, terrified he might suddenly take away the food and searching for a way out. Kakashi isn’t there, neither are the boys- neither was the false hunter nin. It was just the two of them, and she felt a wave of guilt wash over her when she momentarily wished she wasn’t alone.

It was her fault she was too weak to protect herself- the boys didn’t deserve to be here. Not as much as she did. _Besides, Konoha needs it’s strongest genin in it’s care._ She reminds herself with a trembling lip. She needed to find her way out on her own, and she deserved to be damned to this if she couldn’t do it without the others carrying her.

The camp was well set up, all things considering. They were somewhere still in wave, going by the plantlife, but far from the village they’d been in. Isolated. She could always make a run for-

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it.” Zabuza tells her, and she flinches away protectively shielding her face. “Dumbass.” He says, and flicks a hand out to tap her freshly sewn flesh. It hurts, but he’s given her a surprisingly gentle hit, so it doesn’t hurt _too_ much. “Lesson one: prioritize. Forget your hunger or looks, you better protect your injuries first, or you die.”

Considering the man’s heavily bandaged face, this was a lesson he’d learned early.

_Lesson one. Lessons? What?_

“Shut up and sleep already, ask your questions and try your escape attempt tomorrow.” He tells her, and she hates to do what a missing nin, an enemy of Konoha, tells her to- but she’s too exhausted to do otherwise.

She falls asleep and wakes up with dried blood still on her face. Zabuza isn’t there, and she’s frantically assessing escape plans when she realizes this is a new camp. They’ve moved, while she was passed out, which means even in his injured state he’s been dragging her along with all his supplies with him.

_Why?_

Now’s not the time for understanding things, though, as much as her analytical mind wants answers. He’s not here, the campfire is strong and it’s late at night, dark, a waning moon- it’d been a full moon she last saw it, how long has she been out? Still, that means she has cover-

“Good, you’re awake.”

He was back, a stack of firewood in his hand. She’d blown her chance.

“I think it’s about time we start going over the rules, kiddo.” He tells her, tossing the stack of firewood in a pile near the fire and dropping to a crouch in front of her with the ease of a predator.

“First.” He began, lifting up a finger. “You fall behind, you die. You fail, you die. You get on my nerves, you die.”

She wants to point out that seems more like three rules than one, but she’s not about to argue.

“Second.” He continues, and he has to skip a finger because he’s missing one, “No bullshit. I don’t take weaklings or idiots as apprentices. You showed some talent, kid, and you either live up to it, or we refer back to rule one.”

She nodded. It seemed the safest course of action.

“Third. You better make yourself useful _._ ”

He seemed like he was done, but he’d given her more questions than answers, and she couldn’t resist pushing for some kind of understanding.

“Why keep me alive?” She asked him, warily, because he didn’t seem the type to lie but he also didn’t seem the type for charity.

“Guess I’m just used to having annoying brat around.” He said with a shrug. “Don’t wanna do the boring shit myself, anyways.”

Right now, she’d do just about anything for more meat and the fire crackling next to her, warming her bones in a way that helped her ignore the strain in her gut from stretched stitches.

“What do you need me to do?”

“That’s the spirit, girlie. There’s hope for you yet!” He teased, and she nodded again, eager to please, eager to eat. He tossed her some smoked meat and she ate it as greedily as she had her last meal, the world of dieting and caring about her appearance as distant as the moon in the moment.

 “Tomorrow, you’re gonna start some real training, not that bullshit Konoha teaches you.”

 When she fell back asleep it was with a full stomach and an empty mind, and a monster on guard. There are worse fates, in the end- one which she came very close to having. She was too tired to worry about what her futured entailed at the moment beyond her next meal.

She’s woken up before dawn, and her lessons are far less brutal than her nightmares had suggested.

She’s tasked with gathering dry, useable firewood. She struggles under the weight of it, which Zabuza finds hilarious- which would annoy her, if it wasn’t a relief that he didn’t kill her for her incompetence right then and there. Instead, he added a rock to the load and made her carry it back to the camp without a break.

Then, he taught her how to seal the wood in a scroll.

It was….weird, having the man instruct her as if she was an academy student and he was her doting instructor. He said it was fine if she made mistakes, “so long as you don’t fuck up the scroll”, and left her to figure out the specifics of it as he took care of cleaning his blade and hiding the signs of their camp. He even gave her a hard pat on the back when she figured it out, and it took her a moment to get over the initial pride to remember this man was a monster. Sakura had always been a teacher’s pet, and she’d never had a private instructor before. Idiotic or not, part of her was basking in the attention.

Her feelings changed when he ordered her to hunt their breakfast.

“But-“ She stuttered, before realizing she didn’t have an excuse that could get her killed. _But it’s gross? Like he cares!_ “I don’t know how.” She settles for, and she accepts his look of sheer contempt as well-deserved.

“Konoha really doesn’t teach you brats anything, does it.” Zabuza remarks, before tossing her a knife. “Don’t get any ideas, kid. We both know who’d win in a fight between you with that toothpick and me. Now, follow me, and pay close attention, ‘cause I’m only gonna show you this once. If you can’t figure it out on your own after that, you’re not worth dragging around.”

Sakura didn’t hesitate to follow.

They ate pigeon for breakfast, and she pretended she hadn’t felt a surge of pride when she’d downed the second bird herself and snapped it’s neck exactly as Zabuza had. It didn’t seem to matter, because Zabuza was giving her an approving look that told her he had seen that pride regardless of how well she tried to hide it.

When they packed up to leave, he made her carry the heaviest pack and ignored when she stumbled under it’s weight. _Sink or swim._ She righted herself as well as she could under the weight, and set herself to keep as close to his pace as she could manage.

He let her keep the knife. She forgot to pretend she didn’t care.

“A girl after my own heart!” He teased. When she grimaced, he slapped the back of her head in a way that made her homesick. “Nothing wrong with loving blades, kid. You can trust in steel a hell of a lot more than you can trust in a village.”

Sakura didn’t argue. It had less to do with fear of retribution, and more with the knowledge that a weapon didn’t care about clan politics or bloodlines, and her village’s preoccupation might be the reason for her very predicament. Zabuza, in a moment of kindness, didn’t press her- or maybe he could tell what she was thinking, and didn’t need her agreement. Sakura couldn’t quite tell, as new as she was to trying to read the missing nin who now dictated her existence.

Either way, the odd pair made their way forward in a silence that was far closer to companionable than Sakura would ever have expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up: more training, sakura figures out some important stuff about missing nin culture, and if i can fit it in, we get a look in on konoha.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura starts to get it, and we check in with Konoha

 

She wakes up early without complaint, and catches two rabbits and another pigeon for food. Zabuza gives her that approving look, and a part of her goes loose and happy at it despite herself.

It’s as she’s cooking it that he begins to explain her new place in the world, and to her surprise, she’s moved up since Konoha.

“There aren’t many kids in the trade, so to speak.” He begins, resting his gaze on her face as she studiously focused on the cook meat. “When you get picked… it’s important.”

“We ain’t got a lot of fucking trust to go around, in this business. So when a missing nin takes you on, it’s because they think you’ll be useful, and trustworthy.”

Sakura isn’t sure how to take that particular development, because what about her screams _trustworthy_ at a man who would kill his own shadow for standing too close to his back? Beyond that, what about her seems useful? She was useless in that battle, not like Haku at all.

“But loyalty is a different beast for us, too, so I’m gonna teach you the most important rule for apprentices: a dead teacher can’t teach.”

She looks up at him at last, startled, and he grins at the attention.

“At some point, we’re gonna meet other missing nin. And hey, I’m no joke! But eventually, I’ll get old or slow or dumb, and I’ll die- and if it’s by another missing nin’s hand, that means they’re probably going to take you on.”

He pauses to scratch under the wrappings on his face, and she jerks her face back down to stare at the fire and the nearly-finished cooking meat.

“Don’t fight ‘em. Don’t pull some shit over honor. When your sensei dies fighting for you, you better do right by them and stay alive. You learn from whoever beat them, kid, and whoever beats that sensei next, because we’re a lonely bunch and we don’t know how to get shit without stealing it.”      

His voice is low and sad at that, and she sneaks a look at him, only to see his gaze is steady and unwavering on her.

“Okay.” She says, voice cracking a bit, because the promise that her future will be filled with death and treachery is almost as daunting as the idea that she might be worth dying for.

Then, to her utter amazement, he lets out a watery laugh and leans over the fire to ruffle her hair.

“Don’t worry about it for a while, kid. Zabu-sensei’s still got some bite.”

She hates that it’s comforting, and that she ends up feeling lighter for the reassurances. She doesn’t hate it enough to wish he’d never said it.

They eat in silence, both too focused on the food to even consider talking. Then, he sets about her training.

“I’m giving you my speciality, girlie. I’m going to make you sweat and train until you could handle Kubikiribōchō in your sleep.”

“I get to use _your_ sword?”

It comes out more delighted then she’d intended, and he laughs. She can’t help it, though, when the thought of Kubikiribocho is enough to fill her with a distant sense of power. The thing was a bloody, beautiful blade that towered over her memories- it had nearly killed her, but so had Zabuza, and she’d found him a more complex influence than she’d expected.

“Over my dead body, kid. You’re starting off with logs, and you’ll get a blade when we find a village with a decent smith.”

“Logs?”

His smile is much meaner than it was before, and when she sees the damned dead tree she’s meant to wield as a blade, she pouts as if Ino had snagged the seat next to Sasuke.

“You’ll do strength training until you can uproot a tree and using it as your sword, or you’ll die.”

To her immense concern, she can feel herself taking it as a challenge, not a threat. She settles into the forms he orders- unfamiliar katas from the land of the mist- and refuses to wince when he lists off how many push-ups and sit-ups she’ll start her day with from here on out. 

  _I’ll get strong, and then I’ll escape!_ She tells herself, pretending almost successfully that she doesn’t spend the rest of the day envisioning herself with Kubikiribocho in her hands and Zabuza at her side. She’s used to flights of fantasy, she simply won’t let this one take a hold like her dreams of being an Uchiha had.

Right?

\--

Konoha doesn’t mourn for anyone less than a Hokage, so the streets aren’t filled with grief and the shops stay open and missions are still assigned. The world is normal, almost, except for the fact it can never be normal again for the academy’s most recent graduates.

Ino blames Sasuke, her simpering pleas for attention turning into hissed condemnations. What sort of prodigy comes home fine, with a dead teammate left behind? Did he even try to keep her safe?

He doesn’t argue, and it’s the only thing that keeps her from tearing his hair out from his head in a rage.

 Shikamaru and Chouji can’t remember what Sakura looked like before she died, because they knew her best when she was seven and best friends with Ino, and they have nightmares they refuse to admit to of a small dead body in a land they’ve never been to. They do their best to help Ino, because it’s all they can do, and throw themselves into training because _if the prodigy couldn’t save their teammate why would they be able to?_

Kiba remembers the fierce little girl his sister had called _an Inuzaka natural!._ Hinata grieves for Naruto’s most precious person, rivalry be damned, because a corpse is no competition and her crush is falling apart. Shino knows that his clans’ bodies are eaten by the bugs that live in them when they pass, until nothing is left but clean bones and kind memories, and he can’t help but worry about the state of his classmates body. When does it decompose? Had it begun, already, to fall apart as the flames took over it?

It’s the first death of their generation, and it hits even the ones who never met her hard. Tenten visits her empty grave to leave flowers and a kunai, a family tradition for kunoichi  that she extends to a girl she never knew.

Sasuke is the only one who seems unchanged, bitter and silent as ever. The truth is much worse than it appears- he skips meals and can’t sleep, chased by nightmares of massacres with a new body on the pile. He trains until he collapses in a dreamless slumber, often being found by Kakashi in a heap on the training grounds.

A part of him blames Itachi, because he doesn’t know how to accept a death if there’s no one to blame for it, no one to chase after and take a sense of vengeance from. Maybe if Itachi had trained him more, if the other Uchiha had been around to teach him, if he’d focused less on how to fight a man with a similar fighting style and more on how to fight strangers, maybe, maybe, _maybe-_

Maybe the color pink wouldn’t make him shudder.

Naruto is used to the state of loss, of _not having_ in the first place _,_ but he’s never had to lose something. Sakura was his first friend, his first reassurance he could be normal, his first crush. She wasn’t often nice, but she’d never been cruel like the others, and she had cared about him, and now she was gone. She was gone as-in never coming back, not out sick or avoiding him or busy, but _never._

Naruto has never been one to accept things as impossible, and he’s met his first unavoidable wall. He cannot bring back the dead, regardless of how much he wants or believes. Sakura is gone and all he can do is learn to live with it.

He doesn’t know if he can.

He spends his free time reading her old books, struggling through the complex concepts and wondering if she ever had this much trouble with them. Sometimes he forgot how smart she was.  He sits by her grave and he reads new books out loud, ones he thinks she’d like, and he hopes as hard as he can that her body doesn’t have to be there for her to hear the words.

Her parents ask him to move in, sick of quiet rooms and empty seats at meals. They see this boy who tried so hard for their daughter, who throws himself into remembering the girl they raised, and they rankle at a boy the same age as their child living on his own. Maybe they’ve gone soft from loss, but they pay it no mind.

 He doesn’t know how to thank her for giving him a family, especially since it’s a gift caused by her death. He settles for making the kinds of promises you’re never supposed to make a grave: He’ll never let another one die. He’ll never let them forget her. He’ll keep Konoha safe because he couldn’t do the same for her.

It’s a promise destined to fail, but he’s used to insurmountable odds and for Sakura he’d do much more.

Kakashi is cruel and distant, setting a punishing pace and demanding more from his students than he ever did, but his teaching is more practical than he’d ever bothered to before.

 These boys, he’s decided, will live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need some name suggestions for original characters that'll show up Fractures! 
> 
> also, who's your fave member of the Hyuuga clan? does someone being main family color your opinion of them at all, because I know it definitely affects my opinion despite myself :/ its hard not to blame them, okay !! especially the adults.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning for (non-sexual!) graphic content involving a corpse.

They’ve been traveling for a month before they finally reach a town. Sakura is exhausted, having barely managed the heavy workload Zabuza had given her in the days leading up to their arrival. She suspects this was intentional, to make it that much harder for her to attempt an escape. If it was, it had been a good plan- she was far too sore and worn out to even consider making a run for it.

Zabuza leaves her resting in a locked hotel room- on the floor, of course, she hadn’t earned the right to a bed yet. (He did give her a pillow, however, and she clung to it fiercely in her sleep, dreaming of distant teammates and shared rests.) When he comes back, slamming the door behind him loud enough to send her jerking up out of her dreams, he’s barely able to contain his excitement. It’s been far too long since his last job, and this time around, it comes with some entertainment.

“Your first mission, girlie.” He says, clearly very pleased with himself. “You’ve been working real hard, don’t think Zabu-sensei hasn’t noticed!”

She blinks at him warily, waiting for instructions. He sighs. “You could at least _pretend_ to be excited, kid.”

“Wahoo.” She says, dryly. She twirls a single finger unenthusiastically, and Zabuza snorts.

“Smartass. Well, you’re still coming- you’re going to help me collect a bounty on a princeling.”

Sakura might’ve grown up outside of nin culture, but even she knew what that meant.

“You want me to help you kill someone?” she asks, quietly praying that he’ll say no.

“Uh, duh.” Zabuza replies, giving her a skeptical look. “You _do_ know what ninja do for a living, right?”

She huffs, hides her head by pressing it into her knees and wraps her arms around herself. She doesn’t have it in her to argue, and she’s too jaded to plead. She’ll either help Zabuza, or she’ll die, and both options are too horrifying to consider.

He lets her keep her hunting knife, but he doesn’t give her anything else to bring with them. _Fat lot of good I’ll do in a fight like this._ Sakura trails behind him through the streets, hiding her quivering just enough to avoid the attention of the civilians walking past, who are busy avoiding her capture’s gaze. Her small, unnamed hope that there might be another shinobi here who could rescue her wilts away.

They enter a bar, one she likely could’ve gotten into even if Zabuza hadn’t glared at the bartender when they walked in. It was dark, and dirty, and there’s a group of men nearby surrounding a table. Two people are seated, one an older man and the other a young one, barely a few years older than her. He’s pretty, with dark red hair and inky black eyes, and his clothes are much nicer than she’d expect in a place like this. The old man is sweating, but dressed well too, and they both have a handful of cards.

Zabuza gestures to a seat for her at a table of their own, and she sits down quickly. His mouth is barely moving, but she can hear him well enough, and he lays out simple instructions.

“The young one’s the target. He’s a second son and he’s rich, likes to find respected gamblers and take them on. He’s got a soft spot for kids. Get him to take you up to his room alone, yeah? Then open the window. I’ll handle it from there.”

 

She wants to sigh in relief that he doesn’t expect her to stab the boy right away, but holds it in and instead resolutely nods. She makes her way to the table just as the target obviously wins his match, to a chorus of groans and cheers from the small mob who’d been watching and presumably betting. He’s exuberant at his success, glancing at the group with pride, before his eyes flick over to spot her.

For a second, she forgets the mission and the past few days, and all she can think about is how she must look like a mess. Her hair is tangled and her clothes are bloody, and his face shifts to concern at the sight of her.

“Are you okay, miss?” He asks, and his voice is much lighter than she expected for a gambler by trade. It’s sweet. She pauses, before shaking her head no, finally remembering her orders.

“I- my mother…” she murmurs, half-baked excuses on the tip of her tongue and she doesn’t even have to push. He stands up and forgets the game entirely, doesn’t even stop to grab the money he’s won, and takes her by the hand. She stutters out a tragic tale, and he pats her hand and pulls her towards the stairs.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got just the thing for you- I won a necklace recently, it should cover the medical costs and more, I’ve got it just in my room-“ He reassures her, as she drifts behind him.

She prays it’s a front, that he’s a monster about to try and take advantage of her, so she won’t feel so bad about what she’s doing, but when they’re in his room he immediately lets go of his hold on her and begins to shift through his things like he’d promised.

She walks to the window. They’re on the third story, and she can spot Zabuza in the distance, waiting for her to do her part. She hates this, but she knows he’ll just break through the window if she falters, and slaughter them both for her troubles.

Her hands quiver, and she reaches for the latch.

“Fresh air, a lovely idea!” The boy calls out, and as she closes her eyes and pulls open the window, she can hear the sound of tinkling jewelry. He must’ve found that necklace. “It was rather stuffy in the bar, wasn’t it.” She moves away from the window’s path, eyes still squeezed tight, breath shuddering.

When she opens her eyes, it’s at a thud and a strangled shout. He’s on the floor, Zabuza is over him- his eyes are on her, wide, horrified, and then he’s dead.

She stares down at the body of the boy. There’s blood on the floor, his hands limp at his sides. He didn’t even fight back.

“We need his head, kid.” Zabuza says.

She flicks her gaze up to the missing nin, devoid of understanding.

“I’m not doing _everything_ myself. Gotta get your hands dirty.”

He gestures at her hunting knife. It’s not sharp or long enough to cut through the neck in a clean swoop, and she gulps and feels her hands moving to grab the blade and steady the body of the boy. She wants to tilt his head away, so it’s not staring at her as she does this, but she can’t shake the guilt that she deserves to suffer under his gaze if she’s really going to do this.

She presses down with the blade, a slow sawing motion that takes all her force but can’t keep her full attention.

This is not Sakura. She’s not supposed to do this, not supposed to be _able_ to do this. Ino would be terrified of her. Sasuke would find her disgusting. Even Naruto wouldn’t be able to look past this. She’s a monster. Everything fractures, splintering and splitting until her mind is a dizzying blank rush of loss.

 Finally, finally, the job is done.

She cradles the head, doesn’t notice the slick red blood wiping onto his face from her messy hands. “He was such a nice boy.” She coos, hardly understanding what she was seeing. “He was such a nice boy…”

“Kid.”

There’s a wall, in her mind, between her past and her present. Like ice, like glass, a deep river dividing the reality of her situation from her life before it, and the water gets deeper with every second that passes.

Who is Sakura? Where does she come from? She can’t recall. All she can remember is Zabuza-sensei and a deep need to survive, and that this boy had been so nice and now he couldn’t be nice anymore because he was dead.

He was dead. Did she do that? She can’t recall.

“Kid, we have to go.”

“Zabu-sensei, do you think he blames me?” She asks, voice hoarse. The boy’s eyes rest on her, and she can’t tell if it’s judgmental or empty. Zabu-sensei seems to know everything, though, so perhaps he can answer for the boy.

“He doesn’t.” Zabuza says, quickly, little thought to if it might be true or not. He’s seen fellow nin break from reality before, and he’d like to keep her in working order long enough to get out of here.

She smiles up at him. “Oh, good.”

She hands the head over carefully, to get sealed away for transport. They make their way out just before the guards arrive, and for once Zabuza does not have to remind her to keep quiet. They make it back to the hotel in record time, and after she’s washed up they leave the town immediately.

They only stop to rest when they’re far enough away that the village isn’t even a speck in the distance, and Zabuza finally approaches Sakura.

“You, uh, did good.” He tells her. She smiles up at him, just like she had before, and it’s disconcerting to see but he’s happy that she doesn’t seem sad any longer. He’s used to half-crazy grins, after all. Better than a full-on breakdown.

“Thank you, Zabu-sensei!” She says, and she leans forward to hug at his knees.

It’s bizarre, but it’s oddly sweet, so he pats her on the head before shoving her back off him. “Yeah, yeah. Get started on dinner already, kid.”

He has to remind her to clean the hunting knife before she uses it on their food.

\--

Sasuke is no longer in Konoha.

Orochimaru offered, and he had no reason to stay. He needed to get stronger, had needed it so desperately, and Konoha had nothing to offer him but bitter reminders of times he was too weak to save anyone.

Kakashi wonders if Sakura had lived, if that might have been different. He can’t escape the doubt, despite the unlikeliness of it. Perhaps her clinging and affections would’ve won the boy over, to trust in his team. As it stands, she’s dead and he’s gone, and Kakashi is beginning to believe in the team seven curse as much as the other jounins do. Perhaps it’s just easier to blame a curse than himself.  

Naruto leaves, too, having found himself a better teacher. He promises he’ll bring Sasuke back, but Kakashi has his doubts. Perhaps Naruto will end up like Jiraiya, will take to the road and the escape it provides and never return to Konoha.

Naruto leaves the village with a box lunch from Sakura’s parents, her favorite book in his bag and her bandana on his arm. He’s dressed in more black than orange and Kakashi never thought he’d miss the neon sight, but a mature Naruto is a somber one and Kakashi finds himself grieving all his students’ lost childhoods at once.

When Sasuke leaves the village, he has nothing but the clothes on his back and his collection of weapons in his satchel- and the dirt from an empty grave pressed onto his knees from the hour he spent kneeling in front of it.  

 Kakashi does not leave, because there is nowhere he could run where the guilt would not find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry i invented the worlds nicest rich boy just so sakura would have to chop his head off :( 
> 
> just pretend he exists in canon and gets to spend his days beating old men at cards and ends up married to his bodyguard, and they adopt fifty kids and live until they're 180. but in this story hes super dead. no way around that

**Author's Note:**

> last of my fic ideas I wanted to get down! now i'll be focusing on actually working on/finishing all of them lmao. This is definitely the most bitter au towards kakashi, but in my defense, she does sorta-die. 
> 
> also, as for zabuza surviving: it's necessary to the plot, so please roll with it. Maybe he faked his death a second time and the gang bought it because they're generally totally out of it. Maybe he didn't fake his death but Kakashi was good with letting him go 'cause he helped out in the end. So long as the end result is that team seven fucked off and Zabuza is in bad shape but alive, whatever you want to picture works.


End file.
